


For Fluff's Sake

by aparticularbandit



Category: Deputy (TV 2020)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-29
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:42:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22950421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aparticularbandit/pseuds/aparticularbandit
Summary: might be continuing?  might not?  might just do a bunch of fluff one-shots in here?  idk.
Relationships: Bill Hollister/Paula Reyes
Comments: 5
Kudos: 21





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> might be continuing? might not? might just do a bunch of fluff one-shots in here? idk.

It’s gentle, the way he leans her back – taking a moment to focus on the present moment – and her fingers run through the stubble dotting his chin as he kisses her so softly it makes her heart ache. She’d learned to live with the fear of the gun and the uncertainty that every day he is out there is another day he might not be coming home and the trust that he would do everything he could to come back to her – you get used to it after a while, that fear that sits just in the center of your chest and curls up and makes its home there and grows so big that sometimes you can’t breathe and you sit in the middle of your couch covered in sweat and eventually, eventually, _eventually_ you move through the day and the fear gets easier until you almost forget that it’s there because you just don’t think about it _and you learn to live with it_ – and all of that came crashing down to the ground the moment the woman with the gun held her hostage, the moment they came after _her_ , and then it all came rushing back.

She’s never been one to worry about being put in danger by her husband’s job, and even now, she isn’t afraid for herself because she knows that he will always break through to save her – she’s afraid for _him_ again, like it’s their first year together again and she sits in an empty home after her shift at the hospital waiting, waiting, waiting—

He still takes her breath away. In a good way. His lips quirk into that boyish, mischievous smile of his as he pulls away, and she chases it, claiming it for her own the way she had the very first time they kissed. She finds she still takes _his_ breath away, too, and she thinks that’s harder, when she has to compete with his job doing the same thing so very, very often, but she’s _better_ at it.

His hand still wanders. The couch is not the _best_ place for this – they’ll both wake up with sore backs tomorrow, the price of slowly but ever so surely growing old – if they don’t make it back to their bedroom before they sleep, they’ll wake up to Maggie calling them _gross_ and her mom giving them that look and wondering out loud why they had to wait until she visited to act like teenagers again (and maybe that’s really all of the permission they’d ever needed).

“Take a day off,” she murmurs, her hand moving to the nape of his neck and running fingers through where his hair has grown a little too long – she likes it this length, likes being able to swirl her fingertips through where it’s at its softest, but she knows Bill doesn’t. He’s been in the saddle too much with no time for break. He needs a break. _She_ needs a break.

He looks at her with a mouth set to make an objection, and she continues before he has a second to interrupt. “Just one. We can go up into the mountains after you get off work, and we can have a full day to ourselves, and then we can come back the next day.” She kisses his cheek. “Cade can watch over the other deputies for you for a day; Mom’s here, and she can watch Maggie.” It’s an unspoken sort of plea, maybe. She’s been having trouble sleeping. She’s been having nightmares. Sometimes Bill can’t make it through with her, and she thinks maybe – _maybe_ – this will reset her head. Restart her heart.

She needs this, really, and she thinks he does, too.

Her fingers wind through his hair a little more. “You can get a haircut before we go.”

“I’d like that,” he says. His voice is gruff. His voice is always gruff, but it isn’t _rough_ , it’s smooth, it’s as gentle as his hands still on her and her hands still at his neck, his face. She likes to be touching him. It reminds her that he’s real and hasn’t somehow died somewhere and her still thinking he’s alive. “Don’t know if I can just _take off_ from work right now. Jerry’ll take it as an excuse to—”

“Then let him take it as an excuse.” She cups her hand on his cheek. “Let him blunder his way through a job that you’re doing great at.”

_You stay safe with me. Just for a little while._

She can feel him staring at her, staring _at_ her, not meeting her eyes, and she can feel him thinking and trying to decide how to say no, and she just continues to look at his eyes, at his face. Sometimes she thinks she’s memorized all of it – every bit of stubble, every line, every wrinkle, the specks of darker blue in the lighter blue of his eyes – but then she finds something new – the stubble at the edge of his chin is growing white, his blond hair is lightning into salt and pepper in patches, there are new wrinkles at the edges of his eyes – crows feet, from laughing too much, too hard – and sometimes his eyes seem so dark and the lines in his brow seem to press together and grow deeper than they were even when they met. She wonders, sometimes, if she can ease those away, even though she knows that she can’t, that that isn’t how genetics work.

His hand is big and warm against her skin, and he’s still hesitating because he’s still thinking.

“It doesn’t have to be right now,” she says, her voice soft. “It can be next week. Two weeks. Mom wants to help finalize some of the plans for Maggie’s quinces. You know she’ll be around.”

“I—”

“—don’t have to promise anything.”

It’s only then that his eyes meet hers and his expression softens and she thinks he’s reading how much she _needs_ this. Really needs it.

“Ok.” He smiles, and it’s an easy thing. “And that’s a real _okay_. Just let me check my schedule.”

“ _Later._ ” She rubs her thumb along his cheek and moves one hand to his chest, fiddles with the buttons on his shirt. She stares, but she’s his wife, she’s _allowed_ to stare. “Can you still carry me to bed, or are you too old for that?”

He _grins_. “I will never be too old for that.”

He’s lying. Either that or he’s going with that boyish good humor that tells him he won’t grow old like so many other people have and are and will. Someday, she hopes, he will live to be too old for that. She doesn’t say that, though.

It would ruin the mood.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this isn't a continuation of the first chapter - it's a completely separate thing - but i do want to do more in that at some point. this fic is mostly an anthology of paulister fluff moments. ^^

“Come here.”

Bill reaches out and gingerly brushes her hair back out of her face and behind one ear, and Paula looks up from her book, glasses perched just on the edge of her nose, and glances at him. It wasn’t that good of a book anyway. She marks her place with her library receipt and places it on the side table before scooting under the woven blanket with her husband. One hand pats his leg. “Scooch.”

They curl up together on one corner of the couch – Bill leaning up against one arm with Paula cradled comfortably in his lap. She pulls the blanket tighter around them and rests her head on his shoulder. “You told me it would never be cold here,” she says, suppressing a shiver.

“I can get up and turn the air conditioner off.”

“Don’t you move.”

Paula knocks the white cowboy hat back from his head, and it falls to the ground with a hollow clatter. Bill glances over the back of the couch. “That,” he says, his voice firm as he looks back at his wife, “was my hat.”

“Still is.” Paula twirls the strands of hair at the nape of his neck around one finger. “You look better without it.” She meets his eyes. “But you can get it again when you turn the air conditioner off.”

“Thought you didn’t want me to do that.”

“I don’t.” Her lips smooth into an easy grin. “Yet.” She tucks herself a little closer against him. “What did you want me here for, deputy?”

Bill runs one hand down the curve of her spine. “I like you.”

Paula smiles and moves just enough to kiss his cheek. His stubble is rough against her lips, but she likes it. “I like you, too.” She removes her glasses, folds them closed, and places them on the side table next to him. Then she rests her head on his shoulder again and closes her eyes. “You won’t mind if I stay here, do you?”

“Not at all.” Bill kisses her forehead and shifts a little beneath her. “Long as you don’t mind me moving some.”

She takes a deep breath. He smells of sweat – _not great, but not bad_ – of the thick hide of horses and their rough manes, of leather and a little bit of gun smoke. And under all of that, there was his body soap – Old Spice, which she’d always hated before but in the long days without him (especially when he was on a stakeout from the late hours of the night into the early hours of the next morning), she would use to wash her hands so that the smell of him was still strong with her. It wasn’t that she grown accustomed to it – but that it was _Bill_ now, the same that cinnamon and figs were _Christmas_ , the same that soapipillas cooking in the oven were her mother cooking the evening meal on Fridays just before the family board game (not Monopoly, never Monopoly, not after the game of 1987 – she’d been the little dog, which was probably why she wouldn’t let Bill get a dog now) – and now, even though she remembered hating Old Spice when she was younger, she couldn’t help but love it now.

She takes another deep breath and it’s full of the smell of him and she feels comforted just leaning up against him.

“No,” she says, breathing out and nestling against the crook of his neck. “As long as you stay here with me, I don’t mind at all.”


End file.
